Strings: A Dark Contemporary Reverse Harem Romance (Finding Their Muse Book 3)

by Bea Paige

  “I’m not afraid to live, Rose. I’m afraid of hurting another person so badly they never wake up. That’s why I wanted to end my life, that’s why I hide.”

  “But you’re hurting me now.”

  This time he laughs. “No. You’re doing that all on your own.”

  He settles beside me, ignoring how I stiffen beside him. His arm crosses my chest and pulls me close against him, his leg hooking over mine. Then he buries his face in my neck and presses a hot kiss against my pulse, his lips staying there. They’re nothing more than a gentle whisper against my throat. This isn’t what I expected, wanted. I’d seen the monster in his eyes, the wild animal. I’d seen it, and yet my submission has drawn out something else, something infinitely more dangerous.

  Erik, the man behind the monster.

  For minutes he lies pressed against me, the ragged thump of his heart pumping through skin and bone, seeping into me. As the minutes tick by, his breaths become easier, but mine become more ragged. His monster retreats as my fear increases.

  Chapter 26

  I’m vaguely aware of Anton returning to the outhouse, the low murmur of his voice as familiar as Ivan’s even if I can’t make out what they’re talking about. Knowing they’re here is comforting. I’m not certain that I’d be able to do this without them.

  “You submit knowing I could end you, and yet the thing you find scary most of all is this. Why?” Erik asks, pushing me for answers and drawing my attention back to him.

  “I’m not afraid,” I lie again.

  “Not of the monster or the darkness. Not even death. But you are afraid of everything else. Why, Rose?”

  “Not everything…”

  He forces me to look at him, not allowing me to twist my head away.

  “Why, Rose?” he repeats, the rumble in his chest sinking into my skin.

  “Because it hurts…” I choke out, surprising myself as much as him with my response.

  A small smile lifts his lips, lights his eyes. A small shard of hope blooms between us.

  “Let me in, Rose. Let us in,” he murmurs.

  I can feel his breath flutter over me as he lowers his mouth, pressing a tender kiss against my burning cheek.

  “I can’t…”

  “You can, you just have to trust us.”

  “Why should I?”

  “Because we understand, we know what you feel. Because we’re the same as you…”

  Erik presses another kiss against my forehead, then his lips flutter over my eyelids as I close them against the burning embers of his gaze. Finally, he brushes a soft kiss against my mouth, his tongue running along the seam of my lips. He rests his mouth against mine, not forcing a kiss, not pulling away, just breathing me in. His hand cups my face, his thumb brushing against my cheek.

  This kiss, this kiss hurts.

  The tenderness, the care in this one gentle kiss, it’s too much. Panic seeps into my heart, making it pound, making me breathless. Erik’s the one who needs my help, so why does it feel like I’m the one who’s on the receiving end of his?

  “Look at me, Rose,” he commands. His voice steady, demanding in a way I can’t ignore.

  I open my eyes and force myself to look into his golden orbs.

  “I know about Roman. I know what that man did to you, what he turned you into. I know that story because Anton told me. But that’s not the only thing in your past that’s hurt you, that made you who you are today. Like me there’s something deeper. I’ve seen it swimming in the depths of your eyes. You were already broken when Roman found you, tell me I’m wrong.”

  “You’re not wrong,” I whisper as his mouth lowers against my lips once again, brushing delicately. How could he know? How could he possibly know that I was already broken way before Roman finished me off?

  “Tell me why…” There’s agony in his gaze, understanding, pity even. I hate it.

  “No.”

  He presses his forehead against mine, his hand cupping my cheek. “We are the same, you and I…”

  “How so?” I whisper.

  “I understand the pain that comes from abandonment. I see the same kind of pain in you...”

  He’s so close to the truth that I want to flee. But he holds me tighter, not allowing me to run.

  “You don’t know anything.”

  “When I was a few days old, my mother abandoned me on the steps of a hospital. She didn’t love me enough to want to keep me.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You have nothing to apologise for, Rose.”

  Silence descends between us, hurt hanging in the air like a dark rain cloud full of heavy, bitter tears.

  “Tell me what hurts you so much that you’re afraid to love,” he asks.

  I contemplate giving him what he wants. I’ve shared so much with these men already. Can I really give them the rest of me? What will happen if I do? The thought of releasing my final secret makes me feel sick. I’m not ready. I’m not ready. Not yet.

  When I don’t respond, he fills the silence.

  “It’s safer to hold onto the pain, Rose. I know that because I do it every fucking day of my life. But perhaps it’s time we both let it go and start living again.”

  “It hurts too much…” I mumble, feeling cast adrift, turning my head away from him. Not willing to let him see the depths of my pain, because it’s right there. I can’t hide it anymore. Not with him. Not with this man who’s clawed his way so quickly beneath my skin.

  “I know, Rose. I know,” Erik murmurs in return.

  This time he doesn’t try to force me, understanding how utterly vulnerable I feel, understanding me. Instead, he allows me to turn away, choosing instead to wrap his body around mine. Erik holds on tight as my past finally catches up with me.

  For long minutes he waits. Then slowly, with gentle fingers, he touches me. I feel his hand slide between us running over the rope covering my back. He eases away slightly, a draft of cold air moving over my skin as he does so.

  I know what he means to do, my clit throbs for his touch. I yearn for it, the sharp sting of his hand, the threat of danger and fear. I’m ready to lose myself in it.

  But Erik has other ideas.

  “Pleasure doesn’t always need to come hand in hand with pain, Rose. Those two things can be wonderful together if done correctly. But until I’m fixed, I can’t give you the safety of falling into pain knowing I won’t really hurt you. We were lucky before.”

  “I don’t care. I need it…” I murmur.

  I want the danger, so I arch my back, encouraging his hand to move between the crack of my arse cheeks. His hand slips between the parted flesh seeking out the warmth of my folds, drawing out a breathy moan from me. He explores me with his fingers, with gentleness and skill. There’s no question that this man was a lover who brought intense pleasure to the women he fucked before. I can tell by just this simple touch.

  Gentle, erotic, just more… I push against his fingers wanting him, wanting this.

  “You seek out pain, and yet here you are desperate for more of this,” he says, his middle finger sliding inside of me gently. “Somewhere inside, you yearn for another kind of touch. You’re so wet for me, Rose.”

  My body reacts, quivering beneath his intensity. He brushes his lips against my neck, grazing his teeth over the tender flesh, then bites hard enough to pull me up sharp, but not hard enough to hurt before kissing the pain away.

  “No! I want you to punish me.” My voice cracks at his gentleness. Trapped in his arms, restrained in rope, I can only fight back with words.

  “You’re wrong. You fall into the darkness because when you’re a part of it, you don’t need to be afraid anymore. You don’t have to feel. I’m going to ask you again, why?”

  I shake my head and his hand pulls away at my refusal to respond.

  “Wait!” I cry out, clamping my thighs shut and holding his hand between them. I don’t want him to stop. I need his touch.

  Goddamn him. I need it. So, I give him
what he wants, I give him the key to my destruction, and wait to bleed out before him.

  “Roman wasn’t the first person to show me that love is painful, that love is destructive, heart-breaking, disappointing…” I breathe out the sentence as though it’s a lungful of poison. But Erik’s gentle caress, the swirling of his finger over my clit, and the delicate brush of his lips over the bare skin of my shoulder seeps inside, like an elixir to the poison.

  “Who, Rose?”

  “My mother…” I whimper, feeling old wounds opening as new ones are inflicted by a man who touches me as though I’m made of glass, easily breakable. He’s right, I am. The cracks splinter and widen.

  “What did she do?” Erik asks softly, his fingers sliding in and out of me, making me spiral further. I feel raw, helpless against him.

  “She abandoned me at an early age. Emotionally, physically. For years I wondered what I did to deserve such apathy from her. We just existed, there was no relationship between us.” I pant, letting out a breathless moan as his fingers curl inside me, drawing out feelings and emotions that shred me apart from the inside out.

  “Don’t stop,” he orders me gently, speaking the words hanging from my own lips.

  The next part leaves me in a broken tumble of words as I chase the gentle tide of an orgasm that I already know is going to destroy me. “Everyone adored her, they believed she was a perfect mother; loving, doting. But behind closed doors I was nothing to her. I didn’t even inspire enough emotion to make her angry. It was like I didn’t exist…”

  “I’m sorry, Rose,” Erik mutters, running his mouth over the tender skin on my neck. He sucks and tastes, the swirl of his tongue heating my cheeks whilst his fingers leave a mark that runs deeper than the bruises he left when he fucked me before.

  “The only words she ever uttered to me over and over weren’t ‘I love you’, but ‘curiosity killed that cat, Rose.’ It was true, I was inquisitive. From an early age I always looked for answers. I know now that I was searching for a reason why she didn’t love me. Then one day I found it.”

  “Tell me, Rose,” he urges as I let out a moan that eases out of me the same time his fingers do.

  “Wait,” I cry out, not wanting him to pull away, needing to feel him in me, even if it is only his fingers.

  “Easy,” he soothes. “Turn on your back. Look at me, Rose.”

  I do. I look up at Erik, fucking helpless against the emotion in his eyes. Helpless and cast adrift under the current of feeling. What does he see in me? What does he see that’s so alluring? What do any of them see? I’m empty.

  No, you only pretend to be, that voice inside my head tells me.

  She’s right. She’s so fucking right. It’s easier to live in the darkness…

  With Anton I can be who I am within the veil of darkness, it feels right for us both to come together that way and for as long as he needs to do that, I will always follow him into the pitch black. With Ivan I can be the person he needs, that I need in the form of Domina. But with Erik he searches for more. Whatever it is we’re beginning to share, it won’t last if I don’t let him see.

  For the first time in my life I lower the veil a little. I let him in.

  “There she is,” he says, his eyes widening, then softening before he lowers his lips to mine. His tongue sweeps inside my mouth at the same time his fingers enter me once more, breaking me open. Breaking me wide open.

  Years of sadness rise to the surface with this kiss, and I begin to understand just what I’ve been missing, what I’ve been running from. I’ve spent so much energy protecting myself that I’ve failed to grasp that the true value of living isn’t just in surviving, it’s in the act of living itself. To truly live you must feel everything; pain, regret, fear, rage, sadness, joy, love. So far I’ve merely survived trying to live a life in the absence of love, and any feeling associated with it. Erik is forcing me to see the possibility of something different, something more, something I could have if only I’m brave enough to embrace it. I’m not sure I’m there yet, but at least I’m no longer running. With these men, I can be still for long enough to try.

  “Oh, oh,” I cry out, overwhelmed with emotion as he draws out this feeling. The orgasm laps at me, a gentle caress of a warm ocean against my toes.

  But he doesn’t let me slide into the warmth. Not yet. He wants to hear it all.

  “Let it go, Rose,” he urges me, breaking the kiss whilst his thumb swirls circles over my clit.

  “The man I believed was my father, wasn’t. I was conceived not in love but in violence, pain and darkness. My mother was raped.”

  “Fuck!” Erik utters, but he doesn’t stop caressing me. I’m so wet for him, so wanting, that right now I’d do anything to have his cock moving inside me the same way his fingers are now.

  “My mother looked at me every day and saw the man who raped her. She hated me, hated that I existed, and behind closed doors she didn’t even try to hide it. She couldn’t love me, Erik, and because of that I searched for love, finding it at sixteen in the arms of a monster. At least I believed it was love, having nothing to compare it to. Now I know better.”

  “That wasn’t love, Rose.”

  “I don’t even know what that is…”

  My moan is swallowed by his mouth, as he clamps his lips over mine. His tongue sweeps inside, carving a path to my heart with every deep stroke. Erik kisses me with an intensity that brings tears pricking at my eyes. So, I press them shut, not willing to let them fall in this moment. I only want to feel the deep, intense wave of the most beautiful orgasm I’ve ever experienced washing over me. The wave moves up from my toes to my ankles, my thighs, spreading out over my stomach and chest right the way to the top of my scalp.

  Every single inch of my skin feels; inside my muscles clamp around his fingers as they slide in and out with steady even strokes. My lips swell under his kisses, kisses that drive the darkness away. My scalp tingles under the gentle pull of his fingers as he tightens his hold in the silky mess. My skin burns as the rope rubs against my sensitive flesh.

  I feel everything, and as the wave of my orgasm crests, I’m panting for air, swimming towards the surface, away from the depths and the wreckage that lives there.

  When I finally open my eyes, my head is buried against Erik’s neck, my body turned towards his. If my arms weren’t bound to my sides, I know I’d be clinging onto him as much as he clings to me now. My buoy, the man who keeps me from drowning.

  “What about your father, Rose? What about him?” Erik asks as soon as we’re both safely back in the moment and not swimming in the depths of each other.

  “He cared for me, but there was always a chasm between us. He loved my mother more…”

  My voice trails off as hurt swells inside my chest, followed by gut churning guilt. I swallow the bile rising up my throat.

  “What is it, Rose?” he whispers.

  “She loved my father. She loved him with an intensity I was jealous of. She gave him all her love, Erik. She poured every last drop into him and I hated him because of it. I watched my father die that day partly because I didn’t know what to do, but also because I wanted her to feel the pain I felt. I wanted her to suffer like I did. I didn’t try to save him because I was jealous… I’m a monster, just like my real father was. That’s the truth of me, Erik, the last truth. The only one that counts.”

  “Not the only one, Rose. We all harbour darkness within us. Ivan, Anton, me, but is doesn’t have to define us anymore. You’ve shown us it can be different, better. We can choose to be something else. We can choose to fight, to live. You were a child, you were hurt by people who should’ve loved you, who should’ve had your back no matter what. You sought comfort in the arms of a man who tore you apart even more, twisting you, changing you. Your father had tried to save you from him, from yourself, but it was too little too late. They let you down. I won’t. We won’t. Trust us.”

  I can’t respond. I’m a mess of emotions that are shredding me apar
t. Right here, in this glass cage, bound with rope and wrapped tightly in the arms of a man who wants to see every single part of me, my heart cracks open that little bit wider.

  And when he begins to tell me his story, that crack becomes a crevice.

  Chapter 27

  Erik – Afghanistan, five years ago.

  Today, I’m going to die.

  I know this much because I heard her telling him.

  They’d laughed, then her sidekick, the man who helped torture me, fucked her against the wall in my cell whilst my music played around us.

  Eventually, I blanked out.

  Now, an unknown amount of time later, she returns alone. She’s wearing a black suit, her face perfectly made up. Her hair styled, silky and smooth. She enters the room with a dazzling smile on her face.

  “Erik, it’s time,” she says, gently, almost kindly.

  Her face betrays her though. The steel glint in her eyes is hard, unmoving, without emotion or remorse. I don’t understand how I didn’t see it before. How I didn’t see the lies or the emptiness within them. There’s nothing but a black swirling void of nothingness.

  I wonder, briefly, who made her this way. Aren’t we all a product of our upbringing? Or is this nature versus nurture. Was she a hateful being born to destroy, to inflict pain?

  “You’re quiet today,” she murmurs, trailing her hand over my battered and bruised skin. Every now and then she’ll press harder and I swallow a scream of pain. Not giving her the satisfaction of knowing how fucking broken I am.

  “It will be over soon, Erik. There’ll be no more pain. You can join your comrades in hell, perhaps I’ll feed you to the dogs like I did them.” She laughs, the sound scoring deeper than the injuries caused by her hand.

  “Fuck you,” I manage to mutter through a broken jaw.

  She stops, her eyes narrowing. “Maybe I should fuck you? One last parting gift, hmm, Erik.” She lowers her lips to mine and I have just about enough energy to turn my head away. Fuck no. No!